Chapter 3 - What Her Father Left Behind
The advocate’s name was Ruth Alvarez.
She wore practical boots, carried a scratched leather bag, and spoke to Elena without once glancing at Alessandro for approval.
That helped.
So did her first question.
“What do you need most urgently?”
“My sister safe.”
“Good. We start there.”
They spent the afternoon making a plan Elena could actually follow.
Sophie contacted campus security herself. Her residence office received Ryan’s photograph. Elena changed passwords from a clean device and checked who could access her accounts.
Ruth explained how to preserve threatening messages.
An attorney named Naomi Brooks joined them by video.
She asked about dates, witnesses, previous incidents, and the threat outside Elena’s apartment.
When Elena described hitting the doorframe, her voice faltered.
“He didn’t punch me.”
Naomi waited.
“He grabbed you. You were injured while escaping his grip. Tell it exactly as it happened.”
Elena had expected skepticism.
Receiving precision instead nearly undid her.
That evening, she gave a statement to two officers in the estate library.
Alessandro stayed out.
Only afterward did Elena realize how carefully he had avoided turning her report into his performance.
At nine, Sophie fell asleep beneath a knitted blanket.
Elena found Alessandro in the conservatory.
He stood beside a table covered with photographs of old company records.
“May I see?”
He turned them toward her.
“Copies from archived personnel files.”
Her father appeared in one photograph beside a loading dock, laughing with a woman holding a clipboard.
Elena touched the edge.
“He hated having his picture taken.”
“He looks happy.”
“He was.”
The word hurt.
Alessandro indicated the woman.
“June Holloway. Former payroll clerk. Marco found a current address, but nobody has contacted her.”
“Why?”
“Because this concerns your father. I wanted to ask you first.”
Elena sat across from him.
“Call her tomorrow.”
They remained quiet for a while.
Finally, she asked the question that had followed her all day.
“What did you do?”
He did not pretend to misunderstand.
“When I took over, I knew certain operations were criminal. I benefited before I started dismantling them.”
Her stomach tightened.
“People got hurt?”
“Yes.”
“By you?”
“Through decisions I made. Through things I allowed.”
He held her gaze.
“I won’t ask you to trust a better version of my past than the truth.”
Elena looked toward the dark windows.
She had spent years listening to Ryan explain why responsibility belonged to somebody else.
Hearing a man accept it offered no comfort.
Only clarity.
“Then why help me?”
“Because you need help.”
“That can’t be all.”
His expression softened.
“It should be enough.”
The next morning, June Holloway agreed to meet Naomi.
Not Alessandro.
Not his security team.
Naomi.
Elena traveled with Ruth to a small law office downtown, where June arrived carrying a grocery bag full of notebooks.
She was seventy-two, with silver hair and hands that trembled until she wrapped them around a paper cup.
“I kept waiting for somebody to ask,” she said.
Elena could barely speak.
“About my dad?”
June nodded.
“Daniel found employees who existed only on paper. Payments moving through their accounts. He copied records.”
“Was he going to the police?”
“To an investigator. He was scared, but he went.”
June opened a notebook.
“After he died, a man visited me. Told me my children had long walks home from school.”
Elena knew that sentence.
Different man.
Different year.
The same kind of cruelty.
June pushed the notebook across the table.
“I wrote down every date. Every name.”
Naomi read the first page.
Then she stopped.
“What is it?” Elena asked.
Naomi turned the notebook around.
A name appeared beside a payment authorization.
Victor Sloane.
May you like
Elena had served him coffee yesterday morning.
He had been the man most irritated when Alessandro ended the meeting.
